Best of its era

Rating: 9/10 (9 October 2001)

As a movie, this one is definitely one of the greatest ever made. An incredible cast and, for a movie with several directors, superbly seamless.
However, it has definitely reached its sell-by date because of the many variations of war movie and changing attitudes to war over the years. This and Saving Private Ryan are the genre leaders for this historical event and therefore comparisons between the two are inevitable.
The Longest Day is like a diluted version of Saving Private Ryan - you get a lot more but much less strength. Where Private Ryan chooses to dissect the real effects of war on the individual, this movie shows as many aspects of D-Day as possible to provide a complete, unbiased view of the events (we see the war as viewed from the outside rather than the inside). For example, I think the scale of the D-Day invasion is realised in Longest Day, but not in Private Ryan, where I found the opening sequence harrowing but somewhat like a small commando attack rather than the largest invasion ever staged.

A great piece of cinema but, like most war movies of the day, fails to communicate what war was REALLY like.